Yesterday I posted a status on my ‘Dr. Ashley Worobec Facebook Page‘ that showed a couple of pictures from my 10k race the day before.

My words were:

“These pictures sum up my weekend, and why I LOVE to run- this is happiness in its truest form. I raced in the 10k Hannukah Hustle in Hamilton on Sunday morning and I won! It wasn’t a big race, and my 43 minutes wasn’t record-breaking, but as 1st female, I even got a bike escort into the finishing chute and got to break through the finish line tape with my daughter in my arms. This first picture shows me stopping to grab her from the wagon (my 5-yr-old son wanted to stay put!) and the second picture shows the post-race bliss (and exhaustion!). Find something you love and throw yourself into it. The benefits will reach far and wide.”

And then I reconsidered, regretted, and thought-twice for a bit.  Should I have put this accomplishment out there, so bravado and look-at-me and I’m-so-great?  That’s not typically my style, not what I’m about, not who I am.  And yet, I really wanted to share this moment with my patients.  That’s the exact purpose for my Dr. Ashley page; a place where my patients can get to know me and what makes me unique in my time outside of the clinic.  It’s where I can share my opinions on topics that I think would be of interest to them- be it fitness, parenting, or healthcare.  I deliberately keep this Page separate from my personal Facebook profile, and that’s the part I’ve been reconsidering; why was I okay with posting this under my professional persona and not my personal?  Answer: because somehow, it seems less show-offy, less girls-shouldn’t-brag, less boastful, and more polite.  Somehow, I’m a degree removed.

All day, I’ve had people congratulating me on the race.  The feedback has been wonderfully huge, and Facebook tells me that almost 2500 people have viewed those pictures.  And yet, I keep downplaying my run, skirting around the compliments, trying to exercise humility after a showy post.  I’ve “aw, shucks”-ed a lot.  “It was just a small race,” I tell people, “I only won because no one fast showed up,” or “I was dying out there.”

Wanna know the truth?

I felt great.  I felt effortless.  I felt invincible.

And it was a small race and none of the super-fasts came to play, but it was still my first win in years, my first bike escort, my first finish-line tape, and the first time my kids saw their mama WIN.  An outright, unequivocal, black-and-white win that they can understand.  They’ve seen me head out into the pre-dawn cold Sunday after Sunday while they stayed in their cozy pj’s.  They’ve heard me huffing and puffing as I pushed all 80lbs of them in the double stroller on my last training run.  They’ve watched me cross off numbers on my training plan and cross off days on the calendar.  And then they saw me win.

I hope they learned that fitness is fun.  I pray they learned to seek out a passion.  I know they learned that if you work hard you get rewarded.

I recently read ‘Carry On, Warrior‘, in which the author, also a blogger, talks about how she has no shame.  She writes, “I’m shameless.  I’m almost ashamed at how little shame I have.”  I can see where she’s going with this.  As my own blog grows, I can feel my filter loosening.  My take-it-or-leave-it growing.  My this-is-me flourishing.

This is me.  I ran a race.  I won.  And I’m damn proud that my kids saw it happen.